In November the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) announced the mandate, outlining February 2017 as the deadline for operators to facilitate the ID registration scheme, which was ostensibly created to prevent online fraud and increase security in mobile banking.
[...] Thailand's existing 106 million mobile users will not be constrained to register their current devices. This effectively gives non-ID SIM usage in Thailand a withering vine of 3-7 years, based on current upgrade patterns and smartphone turnover.
[...] In January of 2016 Saudi Arabia also announced a fingerprint ID registration scheme, which similarly does not include retroactive registration for existing users or devices. According to a report by the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), mobile subscribers dropped by three million to 51 million in the wake of the legislation, under which information on the SIM is shared with the National Information Centre to confirm the authenticity of the buyer during transactions.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Thursday February 02 2017, @12:38PM
Anecdotally, it seems there is a well-established precedent for these sorts of technologies to be tested in less established democracies before migrating to more established democracies i.e. the West. so this can be implemented in UK and US in about 10 years. Has anyone done a systematic study of the migration of "population control technologies" like this one to the West?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03 2017, @01:55AM
Spain mobiles require ID since... I don't know. It was no ID at first, then they started to request it. If you didn't fill the form, you lost the line or were not given one.
The control crap spreads at different speeds in different places. No clear how, except always being "increase" mode. OTOH, when it comes to anti corruption measures, you see "decrease" sometimes, like the measures in Romania that have caused public parades against (under 44K euros they are administrative issue, not judicial as before).